No rest for the wicked. We touch down before dawn in Sydney after a 22-hour flight and by 7 a.m. I’m live on radio 2GB with Alan Jones. I’m aware talk radio is big in Australia — as you’d expect in a country full of refreshingly forthright people — and Mr Jones’s breakfast show is one of the biggest. Predictably, talk turns to the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Aussie commentators are a bit sheepish about it all. Only 15 years ago, supposedly informed opinion, on the left and the right, confidently predicted that Australia would be a 21st-century republic. They were confounded — disgusted, even — when folks voted in a referendum to keep the monarchy. Now the Australian media is having its tummy tickled by William and Kate — and, much to its embarrassment, it can’t help liking it. What on earth will you put on your front pages and newscasts when they’ve gone, I tease. Now is not a good time to be a republican in Australia, they reply, grimly.
I explain in all my interviews that I must take some share of the blame for this royal resurgence. When William went up to St Andrews University in the autumn of 2001 he began to wonder if he’d made the right choice, as the dreich Scottish winter — cold, damp and dark by late afternoon in an unforgiving November — set in. As Rector of the University, elected by the students to look after their welfare, I played my part in making sure William could change to whatever course would make him happier — anything to stop him doing a runner, which would have been disastrous for the University’s global reputation. He switched from History of Art to Geography (in which he went on to get a decent degree).
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